Bellini: I Puritani
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anna Netrebko, Eric Cutler, Franco Vassallo, John RelyeaConductor: Patrick Summers
Orchestra: Metropolitan Opera
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Italian (Original Language), DTS 5.1; English (Original Language); German (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Classical, Color, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 149 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-12-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
Movie Reviews of Bellini: I Puritani
Movie Review: Voice, voice, voice.
Summary: 4 Stars
Real estate agents like to say "Location, location. location" not knowing that they are parroting what Rossini said about opera "Voice, voice, voice". Now I learn that the original formulation was "Delivery, delivery, delivery". Demosthenes said it about oratory. Let's stick with Rossini's answer here.
How are the voices?
Netrebko has an absolutely gorgeous voice. She is a real pleasure to listen to - as long as the music isn't too fast. She is a lyric not a coloratura. So on the long sinuous phrases she sounds great but on those tricky little notes she just isn't quite agile enough. Her voice sounds rather more slowly than that of a real coloratura. A singer with a voice that sounds rapidly will be able to sing a turn or other ornament in a way that a standard singer just can't. A real coloratura like Diana Damrau would just whip therough all those passages where Nebtrko slows down and articulates each note separately. I've seen Puritani live twice with Sutherland and Sills. Netrebko is a very fine singer whose basic voice is at least as good as their's but its not the kind of voice that usually sings this music.
Cutler has approximately the right kind of voice. This was originally a Rubini part. It was probably done with some kind of falsetto high notes. Rubini interpolated an F above High C when he sang it in Palermo. That note has been called the "Palermo F" ever since. About the same time as Rubini, Donzelli and Duprez had begun to sing the high notes "from the chest". That's the way we are used to hearing opera tenors today. Unfortunately extremely high roles like Arturo are almost impossible to sing from the chest. For example on Sutherland's second recording of Puritani, Luciano Pavarotti sings the High F in a full unmixed falsetto. It is startling. We have the regular lucious full blooded Pavarotti lyric voice until we get to the F where it sounds like they brought in some whimpy countertenor. The young di Stefano has an even more beautiful voice than Pavarotti, but much more trouble with the very top. He doesn't try the F. Most often Arturo is sung by by high note specialists like Gregory Kunde, Pierre Duval, or Juan Suarez. The only major mainstream tenor who regularly did Arturo on stage was Alfredo Kraus. I heard him - alas he was spread on top. Many high note specialists have unattractive voices or limited musicality. Cutler is in a way the worst of both worlds. He has an unattractive voice and he has trouble with the high notes. He doen't even try for the F. He has enough problems with the C.
John Relyea simply doesn't have have a very attractive voice. On the two Sutherland records she has Nicolai Ghauirov and Ezio Flagello both of whom are fabulous. Relyea's voice is kind of rough and gritty when you want sonorous and creamy. Franco Vassalo is better than Relyea but it still isn't particularly competitive. The best baritones in the world have sung this part. That said he does have decent flexibility and excellent high notes. As you might expect the great Riccardo-Giorgio duet isn't very good.
What about the orchestra? Who cares. Puritani is famous for its bel canto singers. The originators of the four major roles came to be called the "Puritani Quartet" - Grisi, Rubini, Taburini, and Lablache. We remember their names almost two centuries later. I'm trying right now to forget Cutler and Relyea.
Summary of Bellini: I Puritani
Live from The Metropolitan Opera, international sensation Anna Netrebko sings Elvira Walton (and her famous mad scene) in I Puritani, a spectacular production revived especially for Ms. Netrebko. The stellar cast includes tenor Eric Cutler as Arturo, Franco Vassallo as Riccardo, and John Relyea as Giorgio. The Music Director of the Houston Grand Opera, Patrick Summers, conducts the magnificent Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Included is a bonus DVD containing revealing conversations between Anna Netrebko and Ren?e Fleming, as well as the late Beverly Sills. The stunning performance on this DVD has been adored by millions of people already through its live transmission in high-definition to movie theatres in the US, Canada and Europe, and broadcasted live on Metropolitan Opera Radio and on Sirius Satellite radio channel 85.It's hard to imagine a video opera collection without this superbly sung MET production of Bellini's I Puritani. Not that it's perfect by any means, but its excellences--most especially Anna Netrebko's electrifying singing and acting of Elvira--banish carping about other aspects of this memorable night at the opera. Netrebko is fragile from the start, her facial expressions and hand movements immediately conveying the girl's vulnerability. She has a mad scene in each act; the first when she realizes her fianc? has disappeared with another woman, the third, in the final act, a brief relapse when her returned fianc? is taken by the army to be executed. But it's in the second act that the real fireworks occur, with a Mad Scene that rivals Donizetti's Lucia for bel canto primacy. Here, Elvira is first heard off-stage, after the chorus has informed us that she's deranged. She enters wearing her wedding gown and begins Qui la voce in a voice as frail as her psyche. Netrebko is gripping here, wandering up and down the central staircase, a lost, pathetic creature. Later in the scene she delivers a spectacular display of theatrics as well as fearless vocalism by singing a florid coloratura passage while lying on her back, her head dangling into the orchestra pit.
Tenor Eric Cutler is her fianc?, Arturo, who helps the Stuart Queen escape from the Puritan stronghold, not a wise move in Cromwell's England, not to mention unhinging Elvira. Bellini gives Arturo one of the most cruelly taxing entrance arias in opera, A te o cara, which Cutler delivers with aplomb. His singing throughout is ardent, well-tinted, and easeful. As Elvira's uncle, bass John Relyea is in excellent voice, his big Act III aria especially well done. Franco Vassallo, as Riccardo, Arturo's rival, is more generic, his baritone lacking the color and shading to bring the character to life. Conductor Patrick Summers leads singers and the superb MET Orchestra in an idiomatic performance, allowing the long lines of Bellinian melody to ripen and expand while also generating excitement in the more dramatic scenes.
Visually Sandro Sequi's 30-year-old production with sets by Ming Cho Lee, is showing its age, but the lighting and video direction (by Gary Halvorson) manage to make it look better than it did in the house. Sharon Thomas' stage direction is largely limited to the stand-and-sing variety, the chorus composed into static formations that make for pretty still photos but lack life. Much of the acting is rudimentary, with the singers looking either bored or stiff or engaged in stock generic emoting. Only Netrebko surpasses this with acting that's on par with her singing--consumed by the character, intense and knowing in her subtle movements and reactions, conspiring with Bellini to make this a must-have. --Dan Davis
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